An arbitrator recently ruled that the Bloomberg administration could not go forward with plans to close—and then reopen—24 failing schools throughout the city. Why not? It would be wonderful to report that the arbitrator found that the city hadn’t gone far enough on behalf of students. But, alas, that’s not the case. Instead, the arbitrator contended that the plan violated labor contracts.

So it’s all about the teachers—and the teachers’ union.

Not surprisingly, the United Federation of Teachers and the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators initiated the opposition. By closing and then reopening the schools, the city could have replaced principals, vetted staff and hired back fewer teachers. Those with a stake in the status quo found this unacceptable. They always do.

The city’s plan is tied to efforts to win $60 million in federal education funds. The arbitrator’s ruling puts that funding in jeopardy and has only added to confusion and chaos in the 24 schools.

One thing, however, is evident: The forces of the status quo continue to show that they have little interest in transforming public education in New York. They have resisted evaluation, accountability, tenure reform and other changes. Their allies in the state Legislature and elsewhere have aided and abetted in this active resistance to reform.

Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott promised to appeal the arbitrator’s decision. “We will not give up on the students at these 24 schools,” they said.

At least somebody is thinking about who really benefits from school reform.

The battle to make the teacher ratings public was long and difficult, thanks to the predictable efforts of the United Federation of Teachers, which devoted a portion of its vast resources and energy to keeping the ratings away from the prying eyes of parents and taxpayers. The UFT was not particularly gracious in defeat—it never is. Union head Michael Mulgrew said the city’s Department of Education should “be ashamed of itself.” Shame, it should be noted, is not a characteristic we associate with the UFT.

The ratings are not perfect. The information is old—the ratings cover the academic years of 2007-08, 2008-09 and 2009-10—and about 23 percent of the teachers who were evaluated no longer are in the classroom.

Critics point out that the ratings—which were based on student performance in standardized tests—were never intended to become public. Former Schools Chancellor Joel Klein initiated the data reports as a management tool within the Department of Education. But the study was, after all, carried out with taxpayer funds and so was subject to public review.

Kudos to news organizations, including the New York Post and The New York Times, that demanded copies of the reports. The UFT fought a battle in the courts for nearly 18 months to prevent the information from going public, but, fortunately, accountability and transparency carried the day.

Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott echoed the argument of some critics when he reminded teachers and principals that the data reports were never intended for public consumption. Faced with the inevitable, however, Mr. Walcott rightly noted that the reports cannot and should not be used “in isolation.” That is absolutely true—the full measure of a teacher’s performance cannot be gauged by standardized test scores alone.

All the more reason for a truly robust and comprehensive system to evaluate teachers and principals alike. The union has to realize, after so many defeats in the court of public opinion, that the status quo is unacceptable. Public education—in New York City and elsewhere—simply cannot remain firmly entrenched in the 20^th century.

New York, it should be noted, is not the only city to make this information available to the public. Teacher ratings in Los Angeles were published in the Los Angeles Times last year—against the local union’s wishes.

It is not too much to demand that a vast, publicly funded institution be accountable to the public at large. This is the new normal in public education. And that’s a good thing.

This would be a tragedy on many levels. But beyond the tragedy is a scandal. The very union that has fought against all efforts to reward merit and banish mediocrity actually pulls teachers out of the classroom so they can work on union business. Some of those teachers earn sizable salaries courtesy of city taxpayers even as they collect very good salaries from the United Federation of Teachers. And it gets worse--the city has to pay for substitutes to fill in for these double-dipping teachers.

According to the Post, about 40 senior teachers earn salaries as high as $100,000 a year but spend just one period a day in the classroom. They spend most of their workday on union business, earning up to $56,000 a year. Meanwhile, hundreds of other teachers are given time during the day to attend to UFT business, which generally consists of thwarting the public good.

The city has to pay more than $9 million a year to hire substitutes for the non-teaching teachers, a sum that would help save the jobs of dozens of teachers. (The UFT, which collects more than $100 million a year in dues, writes a check for about $900,000 to reimburse this cost.)

If public-employee unions want to know why they are losing the public-relations war--in New York and elsewhere--the UFT's non-teaching teachers should be Exhibit A in how not to win over taxpayers. The UFT has every right to employ a staff dedicated to the proposition that change must be stopped, that antiquated work rules are sacrosanct and that accountability must be avoided at all costs. But taxpayers should not have to subsidize this bizarre activity.

If the union were concerned about students, it would stop taking teachers out of the classroom and work with Mr. Bloomberg to develop a more equitable approach to seemingly inevitable layoffs.

The UFT continues to be an advocate for the unacceptable status quo. And that, too, is a tragedy--and a scandal.

If you're not laughing, you're probably weeping. And with good reason. The UFT is, of course, a paragon of all that a union should not be. It objects to progressive change. It protects incompetents. And it stands in the way of authentic educational reform.

Imagine how the UFT would react when one of its prospective members is called on the carpet for displays of injudicious temperament, or for wildly inappropriate rulings. Perhaps the union's leaders would demand a rubber room in the state's courts, so incompetent judges could continue to collect their wages while doing nothing.

The state's judges make $136,700 a year and haven't received a wage increase in more than a decade. They deserve an increase.

They don't deserve the UFT.

No, not Michael Bloomberg. It’s Comptroller-elect John Liu.

According to unofficial results, Liu got 696,330 votes, with 652,511 on the Democratic line, and 43,819 on the WFP line.

The second-highest total belonged to Bill de Blasio, in the public advocate’s race. He got 672,383 votes. 627,390 came on the Democratic line and 44,993 from the WFP line.

Michael Bloomberg got 557,059 votes in total. 414,242 came from the Republican line and 142,817 came from the Independence Party.

Bill Thompson, the Democratic nominee for mayor, got 478,521 on the Democratic line, and only 27,196 from the WFP line. It's worth noting that even though Thompson got the WFP endorsement, he did not get a bulk of the unions that make up the WFP on board with his campaign. 1199 SEIU and the United Federation of Teachers stayed neutral in the mayor's race, while 32BJ and the Hotel and Motels Trade Council endorsed Bloomberg.

And here are some other factoids readers have noticed:

Mark Green got 150,000 more votes losing in 2001 than Bloomberg got winning yesterday (710,000 to 550,000). "Obviously, turnout in 2001 was about 40% compared to yesterday's 25%," this reader said.

Another reader noticed turnout for the mayor's race yesterday was down, compared to four yeas ago. But it was up in the two other citywide races.

Mayor

2005: 1,289,666

2009: 1,100,649

Change: -189,017

Public Advocate

2005: 827,513

2009: 874,847

Change: +47,334

Comptroller

2005: 805,452

2009: 916,523

Change: +111,071

They’re major unions with well-proven Get Out the Vote operations. It’s also worth noting that they are part of the labor coalition that runs the Working Families Party which, as an umbrella organization, backed another candidate in the race, Richard Aborn.

Other W.F.P. constituent-unions joining 1199 and 32Bj in backing Vance are RWDSU and the teachers union.

The Material Girl took a tumble off a horse on Saturday afternoon, and since then Madonna's handlers have been saying a photographer that leapt out of the bushes to catch her riding spooked her horse, causing the fall. But the photographer they've fingered says he wasn't at the farm until 10 minutes after the fall happened. Either way, it's clear that tabloid photographers descended upon the Hamptons in droves after the accident, hoping to get some candid shots of the singer, and it appears that the News succeeded: Walking on the beach, she agreed to be photographed on her own; at unspecified times, according to the Post, she refused the same request of other photographers. So the News has a candid photo of Madonna that the other guys were trying to get: what to do? There's not much of a story here, is there? And yet, she looks so nutty in these pictures—at least, nutty for someone whose public image is normally so closely tended. You have to put it on the front. They crop in close to her face, which is looking a bit tired and windswept, tendrils of dyed-blond hair blowing like stale cornsilk across her distinctly unretouched visage. The headline? "LADY SINGS THE BRUISE." O.K.!

Even with this arguably "hot" photograph, though, the news is a bit thin on the ground on the Madonna story (the News had, after all, already devoted half its cover to Madonna's insignificant accident in the Sunday paper). So two little refer-boxes at the top: one proclaiming the Yankees' finally winning a game; the other an update on the developing "pension scandal" story, in which a "Clinton pal" is now named.

New York Post: First, a little background that puts our own "tabloid wars" in a bit of perspective. News of the World, the British tabloid that is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and which is currently edited by Colin Myler, a former executive editor of the New York Post, got a tip a while back that the father of Rubina Ali, the child star of Oscar winner Slumdog Millionaire, was looking to find an adoptive family for his daughter in an illegal cash transaction. The family is poor, and remains so even after the success of the film; the family's plight, documented on an Al Jazeera program, had prompted a family in Dubai to make inquiries about adopting the girl, and a source told News of the World that the offer had set Rafiq Qureshi, the girl's father, on a path of finding an even more generous offer to adopt the child from somewhere in the Middle East or the West. So News of the World reporters did what any journalists would do: They dressed up as a family of sheiks and made an offer, recording the interview for posterity. It's quite a tale, and no doubt the Post's connection to News of the World made it that much more of an obvious choice for the cover of the paper today: After all, promoting another newspaper's big scoop is easy enough when you've got the same owners. The headline even front-loads the "sting operation" itself: "'Scumdog' dad in girl for sale sting," the headline reads.

It's all about the kids in the Post this morning, in fact: The bottom of the page reads "KIDS LOSE: UFT killed bill and saved bad teachers." But better by far is the little photo illustration of United Federation of Teachers head Randi Weingarten, who is pictured manipulating the strings of the famous marionette Pinocchio (the Disney version) over the legend "PUPPET MASTER." This follows up on an April 8 cover treatment of Ms. Weingarten that read "PUPPET MASTERS," and was about something called a "shock charter ploy." No, we didn't figure that out, either. This time it's also difficult. It appears that Ms. Weingarten's staffers introduced language into a bill through statehouse staffers sometime last year that effectively removed the possibility of test scores being factored into tenure evaluations. This happened in "apparent violation" of a law that ordered the formation of a commission to investigate the use of test scores. More importantly, all of this happened about a year ago. What is newly discovered, and what was already known? The article, which is a coproduction of Albany wag Fred Dicker and reporter Chuck Bennett, isn't too clear on this point: "[In] in mid-March 2008, an operative from the UFT contacted mid-level budget staffers for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Bruno to insert a phrase into the budget that effectively eviscerated the tenure-reform effort.

'The union was claiming that the [phrase] would only clarify what was an already existing policy,' a Senate Republican insider said. 'It turned out to be much more than a clarification.'

At the end of the article, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is quoted from last year calling the whole thing "craziness," but it seems it is the result of this nefarous Puppet Master plotting he is reacting to; the news must be the actual tick-tock on how Ms. Weingarten got the job done. For which, incidentally, there are no apologies and no obvious cover-up. Ron Davis, a spokesman for Ms. Weingarten, tells the Post: "We forcefully advocated for the tenure language, and we make no apologies for this."

General observations: We've said before both that Randi Weingarten has a soporific effect on front pages, and that the issue of her leadership at the UFT and the ongoing struggles over school reform are a great topic for the tabloids. Today's outing looks pretty promising: You'll have had to plunk down your two bits already before you discover that you're not sure what the news is. Meanwhile, the smiling face of Rubina Ali is hard to refuse, looking pleadingly outward from her father's embrace at the reader just as though we, too, are dressed up as ersatz sheiks planning to adopt. (So much for that, Rubina. Looks like you're stuck with Dad now!) We're left now to consider the position of the Daily News. If you or someone you know ever, as a child, actually caught a pigeon, you know how weird it is: The impossible achieved, now you've got a dirty bird in your fingers, and no real idea what to do with it. Such, we imagine, is how the News must have felt about this Madonna picture. Of course you must go with it: This is a photo that the other guys tried and failed to get, so it scores a direct hit in the Tabloid War. It's just too bad there is so little story to go with the picture. The two refers up top of the page don't help much to lend substance to the cover. But Madonna's giant porous un-made-up face is sure to attract attention; it's really Madonna vs. Rubina Ali. How to choose? The Rubina Ali story has some real narrative to it, even if it is just lifted wholesale from a sister paper. The Madonna story, well, it's really just that the News got the picture. It's a close thing: We expect that the Madonna cover made the Post a little angry, and that is good. We'd applaud the ongoing UFT campaign for topicality, if the news didn't seem a bit old to deserve the kind of treatment it got today. The Rubina Ali story is just sad all around, and somehow seems to depend on the Post's access to a faraway tabloid battle that plays by its own set of rules; the News doesn't have a sister paper where people can dress up as sheiks and pretend to adopt a child star from the slums of Mumbai. All is fair in war, but the battle of photographers to get Madge in her natural state is a much bigger enterprise than any suggested by the Fake Sheikhs of Fleet Street. We're keeping this battle local.

Winner: Daily News.

Do you like Metallica? Do you know who Randi Weingarten is? Then the front page of today's Post is all for you! "PUPPET MASTERS" reads the wood. If you can tell what a "shock charter ploy" is without turning to the inside, we award you the Teachers' Union Monthly Newsletter Close-Reader of the Month award. By the way: It's an important piece. And the tabloids really need to figure out how to sell the story of the teachers' union and its politics: it matters! And it matters on a personal level to lots of New Yorkers. But here's the question: are you picking up the Post to find out information that matters to you? Or are you amusing yourself on the way to the office? We've long felt that there are two magic words that make readers go away: RANDI and WEINGARTEN.

Daily News: Is it Brillig already? No, just cruel April. Those slithy toves! Do you know what I am talking about? Yes, you do: we have your demographics figured out. The Daily News, not so much. See, everyone has heard the name "Friar Tuck," even if they don't know that he's from Robin Hood or that recently there has been a hullaballoo in Britain about the fact that a new television series has him being played as a black martial arts expert (there were no Africans in Britain then, historians object! But of course, there were no friars then, either. Historians need to work on their history!) Anyway! Everyone has heard the words "Friar Tuck" even if they don't know the source. But what about "JOBA WACKY"?
OK, let's humor the News for a minute: Joba was drunk. There was a bottle of Crown Royal. It was Nebraska. What did he do? He said that New York was a tough town. A gay town? A town full of dirty immigrants? No, we'll leave all that to the Atlanta Braves. Just a town where Yogi Berra stops by every now and then and you say, "Yogi, what the f--- are you doin' here?" Yeah, there's not much here. He's not that wacky. The story is a bomb. But it might be the biggest story in New York sports today! Which is why the Post wisely let its back page do all the talking on this one.

So why does this take up two thirds of the Daily News front page? We don't know. We do know this: they got the crop right on the Barack Star (see, the coinage is taking already!) photo. OK, now all you needed to do was take this crop and make it twice as big ... there you go! That is wood.

General observations: There's not much to say today! The Daily News stank. The Post lost the plot on the Obama photo, but played it big enough that it will matter. Do they suffer for having spent valuable space on Randi Weingarten, interest-killer? No, because the competition stank so badly.

Winner: The New York Post.

Liz Green at Gotham Schools has this slide show featuring the scripted questions handed to City Council members, by the United Federation of Teachers, at a hearing on charter schools.